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The arrival of the newest volume of The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child is always a welcome event. It serves as a textbook for those of us who study and teach in the fields of child development and adult and child analysis and provides a wide variety of well-written and challenging presentations. Volume 33, like the preceding ones, brings readers into intimate contact with reseachers, clinicians, and theoreticians, present and past, like Rudolph M. Loewenstein and Edith Jackson, for whom memorials are written in this book.
The first section of this volume, “Theoretical Contributions,” contains five papers. The first two, by Downey and Hong, provide interesting views of transitional phenomena. Downey's thesis is that a careful focus on transitional phenomena, such as clothing and art productions, can reveal the presence of a developing positive transference neurosis in early adolescent males, who often show resistance to analytic work. Hong integrates studies of transitional phenomena from psychoanalytic, experimental, ethological and cross-cultural points of view. The occurrence of blanket attachments is influenced by sociocultural factors and child-rearing practices and is universally correlated with the quality and quantity of physical contact with the mother. They aid in ego development and separation individuation. Krystal's “Trauma and Affects” traces the history of the concept of trauma in analytic writing. He proposes a clear differentiation between the infantile form of psychic trauma, a terrible state of distress and mass stimulation, and the adult form, initiated by surrender to overwhelming danger and consisting of a progression from anxiety to a catatonic state to eventual psychological death. The aftereffects of both of these forms of trauma is fear of the return of the traumatic state and pervasive anhedonia. Ornston's “On Projection, A Study of Freud's Usage” is an exhaustive review of projection, with references, found in the work of Freud and other